Facebook Launches Privacy Overhaul

True to its word, Facebook is rebuilding its privacy regime from the ground up. But this isn't just an idle policy change. All 350 million-plus users on the site will have to update their privacy settings. eSecurityPlanet has the details.

Facebook is set to begin rolling out a site-wide overhaul to its privacy controls, a process that will require all of its more than 350 million users to update their personal settings that govern how their information is shared across the network.

Beginning later today, when users visit the site, Facebook will greet them with a privacy announcement page that offers an overview of the changes and prompts them to navigate to their privacy settings page.

Users can click a button to skip the step, but Facebook officials said that when they log in again after 24 hours they will be required to update their privacy controls.

The changes, announced last week by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, aim to simplify Facebook's elaborate privacy settings, while also giving users more granular control over who has access to the information they post on the site.

Elliot Schrage, Facebook's vice president of communications and public policy, told reporters on a conference call this morning that the update is a shift to "a new, simpler model based on contextual privacy where users control the privacy over every single thing they share."

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